Profiling the Five Heavyweights Driving the 3D Printing Industry

Mr Reichental regards 3D printing as a “disruptive technology” with the power to revitalise the global manufacturing industry. In the past three years he has spent about $230m on acquisitions to make 3D Systems the fastest expanding large 3D printing equipment producer.

Hans Langer, CEO of EOS

The sparkling-eyed German physicist has turned EOS into one of Europe’s most promising high-tech mid-sized businesses and one of the world’s biggest makers of 3D printing hardware.

He has expanded his Leuven, Belgium-based company’s range of services to make parts using 3D printing for a large group of customers in fields from interior design to the medical equipment industry. Materialise also makes its own range of personalised jewellery using the technology.

He has built up Stratasys into one of the world’s biggest makers of 3D printing systems and is keen to stress the links between 3D printing and other forms of “digital manufacturing” in which computer codes are used to instruct factory machinery to make objects, often on a customised basis, relatively cheaply and to high precision.

Sir David McMurty, Chairman and CEO of Renishaw

Sir David regards 3D printing as a “unique business opportunity” with “plenty of scope for development” and became interested in the technology prior to Renishaw’s acquisition last year of MTT Technologies, a small Staffordshire-maker of 3D printing machines.